The blue we breathe
by serpentnine
Summary: Kain finds himself deposited twenty years too early in history, and must deal with the consequences. Warnings for underage abuse.
1. Deep Blue

Warnings for blood, gore, and underage, non-explicit sex. This story has been overhauled from the previous version, as of Sep 2011.

.

.

But this blue I'm compelled to glorify

it's not robin's egg, navy, or indigo;

it's a shade that should be

named "devastation blue,"

the excruciating, lacerative blue of today's sky

whose incandescence suggests

that its nearest blood kin is neither

violet nor emerald,

but gold.

.

.

.

The tavern wasn't big enough for stables, but had its own whore.

And in a tiny trade town like this, that was saying something.

Wooden buildings, their planks rough-hewn and unfinished, clung close alongside a single mud-choked, deeply rutted street. The place had no fortifications. Filthy animals and filthier children wandered the shadowed alleys - proof enough that the humans in this place, in this era, had no fear of the creatures that stalked the night in less settled times.

Kain lifted his head, nostrils flared with distaste. His sense of smell seemed to grow only more acute as the ages passed, but at times like this, that dark gift seemed more a curse than a blessing. The streets were open sewers - the dim drizzling rain only muted the stench. Tepid, dirty water dripped from the hem of his thick cloak.

Nowhere could Kain find evidence of Sarafan lordship, though that didn't mean much, in a place as squalid as this. Eventually, the clouds would surely clear to reveal the stars, but until then...

Kain stepped nimbly aside to avoid being splashed by a kicking mule, the animal dumbly terrified by the nearness of a vampire, its handler cursing it roundly. Under better weather conditions, Kain would not have hesitated to simply fly to a larger town, someplace that might hear news of Nosgoth more frequently.

Flying in the rain, however, was a misery that overshadowed even spending the night among humans.

Crude music was beginning to drift from the ramshackle tavern, punctuated with drunken laughter. With a great deal of luck, the place might be hosting a traveling minstrel, someone who could tell Kain in exactly what era he had landed. Kain was familiar with the history of Nosgoth, of course - there was probably no one who understood the land as he did - yet tales of this era, some five hundred years before Kain's own birth, were largely myth or legend even to him. No reliable historical texts even existed.

Oh, Kain knew that he'd emerged from the chronoplast in roughly the correct era. His research told him that much. But did he find himself here at the height of Sarafan rule, while his sons still drew breath? Kain could be a year or a month too late, or a hundred years too early, for all he knew.

A drunken ore miner staggered from the tavern as Kain approached. The human began relieving itself in the street. Kain's lip curled in disgust. No matter the age, one could always expect humans to behave like the beasts they were. Even the noble classes, such as existed, were hardly better mannered than this sordid creature.

Steeling himself against the reek of sweating human, Kain pushed open the tavern doors, shaking back the hood of his cloak. Rain no longer harmed him, but neither was its touch a pleasure.

Wrapped in beguilement, Kain's features seemed perfectly human, and so his entrance garnered little attention from most of the half-drunken men. One rotund little man however, alert to the signs of wealth and nobility, pushed through the crowd towards him. The innkeeper, he assumed. The little human bowed as deeply as its fat belly allowed, abasing itself, as was proper. Less reverently, the man kept up a steady stream of words, offering Kain the finest seat in the inn, a comforting drink, the whore, a warm peg near the fire for his cloak...

"Your minstrel," Kain said, interrupting the innkeeper's inane babble. "From whence does he hail?" The player in question had climbed on a table, presumably finding that a better vantage from which to ill-treat the lute he carried. The men around him laughed and shouted, apparently finding the discordant tunes highly entertaining. They squabbled over ale and tattered playing cards. The tavern whore - a ragged, frail thing - writhed half-heartedly on one reveler's lap.

"Him?" said the innkeeper, twisting around to look, as if there could be two such musically disinclined humans in the room. "He be no mistral, Lord. Just a local boy. But if the Lord will wait, a better is due into town any hour. An' he's surely worth waiting for! In the meantime, we has a fine stew, fit even for your lordship, and bread, the very best in Nosgoth, fresh from the ovens, it are! An'..."

Kain swallowed his aversion and allowed the innkeeper to lead him to a table near the fire. Bowing and scraping, the creature chattered away, listing the goods and more... personal services offered by the tavern, punctuated with fawning flattery. At last, Kain cut the human off. "Red wine," he said, "mulled, if you have it."

He waited until the innkeeper backed away, bowing, before he pulled out the rough wooden chair and sat slowly. Damn and damn again. If this were any other era, Kain would have happily laid waste to the entire village. He could have flown to the Sarafan stronghold and seen for himself what was transpiring. But history disliked tampering. A certain... pressure weighed on Kain, the knowledge that he was the grain of sand within the oyster's shell. One false move, one disruption of a vital event or even life, and Kain might very easily find his presence rejected by the timestream.

Kain was in this age for one purpose, and one alone. He would witness Raziel slay his brethren. And in that moment, the fate of all the world would be decided.

If this minstrel could at least pinpoint the exact date, then Kain might...

A drunken roar was taken up by the crowd of gambling men, and the tavern's whore was shoved to the floor, where it crawled between another man's spread thighs. Tired, stringy women lofted trays of steins overhead to weave through the crowd, unconcerned by the uproar. The serving wenches in places such as this could be bought for the price of a few drinks. But they weren't generally available till after closing, and innkeepers strongly frowned on customers that permanently injured the girls.

Thus, the tavern whores. The lives of orphans or runaway slaves were nasty and brutish, no matter the era or the town. "Employed" as tavern whores, their existences were invariably short as well. The thin, dirty human, its face buried in an unwashed ore miner's open breeches, looked to be near its end. Even in the sweaty heat of so many humans crushed in so small a space, the whore shivered.

An engraved goblet was placed before Kain, and he turned his attention to the innkeeper, who also trembled, though for a far different cause. Kain's nostrils delicately flared, catching the rancid bite of fear-sweat. Beneath the rough notes of liquor and flavoring herbs, the wine smelled of bitter almonds.

Kain's lips twitched, nearly a smile. Few toxins could harm a vampire, and fewer still could harm one as ancient as Kain. He withdrew a small silver coin - payment for the drink ten times over, no matter the era - and rubbed it hard between two fingers before placing it on the table in front of the innkeep.

The man's thick fingers reached eagerly for the coin. Kain laid a manicured nail on the metal, forcing the human to glance up. One look, and the human's rotted little mind was caught, hooked like a worm upon Kain's barbed will. Kain smiled. "Watch for the minstrel. Bring him to me when he arrives," he said calmly, "and there will be another of these for you."

The human nodded in frantic agreement, its rolls of jaw-fat flopping. To any onlooker, the innkeeper appeared to have stuck a simple bargain. But a compulsion had been planted in the human's mind, an inescapable command. No matter how it tried, no matter how it struggled, the human would not be able to avoid following Kain's directive.

Kain withdrew his hand and the silver coin was snatched up. The innkeeper studied the coin briefly and then bit down on the rim. The silver, of course, was real enough. But the massive strength of Kain's touch had effaced the impression stamped on the coin - the coins of Kain's empire were all marked with a lieutenant's profile.

The human backed away, bowing, its piggishly crafty eyes alight with murderous avarice. Kain waited until the human retreated to the bar before palming the goblet of spiced wine. The warmth of the liquid was enjoyable, though a cautious sip confirmed that the flavor was not. A pity, for Kain occasionally enjoyed human-made liquors, even if his body tolerated them only in very small quantities.

If innkeepers made a habit of poisoning travelers - Kain couldn't imagine it was the fat man's first such attempt - it surely meant that Sarafan law and order currently waned. Perhaps Kain found himself inserted too late in history, in a time when the Sarafan scrambled to maintain control after the deaths of their living saints.

Or perhaps Kain was early - the Sarafan hadn't yet extended their control to this hamlet. Kain shook his head in disgust, setting the goblet back down. Human history was simply so... so very transitory. An empire in its glory one decade could be crumbling the next. Spheres of power waxed and waned; little border towns like this one were lawless one year and taxed to extinction the next. There was no stability under human rule - there never could be.

This stinking town was no place for him. There was nothing to be found here worth this aggravation. He would find someplace sheltered in the forest and move out once the rain cleared. Kain laid his palms on the table and stood.

His knees nearly buckled.

Kain closed his eyes against sudden nausea, against encompassing weakness. He could hear - could smell - the innkeeper sidle closer. The wine... but no, no chemical could... but what if...

Crippling vertigo rose in pulses. Reality bowed, distorted, warping into patterns as wholly familiar and as unnatural as the edge of a coin, flashing as it spun in the sun. Something was about to go history-shatteringly wrong.

Nascent paradox.

Oblivious humans shouted, crude furniture cracking loudly as a drunken fistfight broke out. Wenches shrieked, fleeing for the kitchens. Some creature whimpered as it was kicked aside. Baked clay plates shattered on the floor.

And the paradox ended. Just like that, in less than a second, without Kain's intervention, just... over.

A slender body thumped onto Kain's table, hardly rattling his wineglass. Teeth bared in a snarl, nails gouging furrows in the table's soft wood, Kain opened his eyes...

...into blue. Not bird's-egg blue, not navy, nor indigo. Rather, devastation blue, glory-blue, lacerative, eyes of a shade more familiar to him than any other color in the whole of Nosgoth.

The whore's name was on his lips before he knew it.

"Rahab..."


	2. Nearest Blood Kin

"Rahab..."

This tiny human, this... this tavern whore... but the bones of the face were right, and the scent... was too hard to distinguish under the stink of sweat and semen and the layered foulness of humanity. Panic twisted its features. But the eyes...

Kain felt as if he were moving very slowly. There was a burly human nearby, its arm upraised, broken bottle in hand. Kain reached out and, quite without thinking, caught the downward blow.

And snapped the human's arm. In, if Kain was any judge of injury, _and he was_, approximately six places.

Time returned with the shrill and unlovely sound of a human in true agony. The ore miner staggered back, its dirty mouth agape, clenching its shattered forearm. The barroom brawl ground to a halt.

"Your best room," Kain growled, and realized only distantly that the sound from his throat wasn't even human. "Where is it?" The tiny wretch - Rahab - on his table tried to sit up, and Kain laid a long-nailed hand across the center of its chest to hold it in place. The tiny heart fluttered under his hand like a trapped sparrow. Too hard, he realized as the human thumped back down on the wood. Too hard, and Kain could barely touch healthy humans without breaking them. And the stench...

The piggish little innkeeper started from its daze. "Oh it's... just up the stairs, Lord. There's nobody. Nobody in it. Mebbe you could use a few winks, some company, time to sleep off yer wine, 'cos we grows em strong round here, the grapes I mean, and- "

Kain reached out and jerked the innkeeper to him, the use of telekinesis instinctual and very easy. He tore his gaze from the... the whore - the blue - and narrowed his eyes at the innkeep. "Send up food. And a bath," he snarled. "And if you try to poison me again, I will gut you myself."

He dropped the squirming innkeeper and removed his hand with distaste from the ragged whore's - Rahab's - thin chest. "Get up," he commanded the human. It shivered as it looked back, terror writ plain on its starved face. He'd never seen those eyes hold such blank and unthinking fear, such human weakness. Rahab had faced down Kain's firstborn with arrogance and authority; he expected no less from any of his sons. "Get up now!"

The tiny human scrambled upright, eyes darting as if it intended to run. The room had grown silent, save for faint whispers - *magician* and *warlock.* The little human hung its head and started slowly for the stairs.

"Move!" Kain roared, and whore tripped over its own feet, scrabbling up the rickety wooden staircase. Kain caught the eyes of the innkeeper, who still weakly clasped its flabby throat. "And see that I am not disturbed," he growled. The innkeep nodded frantically, making choking sounds Kain took for agreement.

Kain turned and followed the little human, making sure it never left his sight.

The hallway was short; a curtained bunkhouse and three doors lead off from it. The whore - Rahab - darted to the door at the end and shuffled nervously, touching the latch and then jerking his hand back. He shuddered and looked to Kain, meeting his eyes only for a moment and then casting them back down, somewhere in the direction of Kain's knees.

"Enter," Kain said, and could not keep the harshness from his voice.

The little human struggled with the door and pulled it open, darting through the moment there was space enough. Kain followed, pushing the lightweight wood open on frayed leather hinges. The room was very small, he saw, stepping inside. There was a single tiny window, and the space contained nothing but a single bed, covered by sheets Kain could never have brought himself to touch, and a small table, no chairs.

"Sit down," he growled at the whore, and the little human scrambled to the bed where it perched, shaking. Kain pushed the door closed behind him, very carefully, to avoid ripping the planks from their moorings. He closed his eyes briefly. If his memories hadn't changed, that meant... that meant what? That Rahab would survive? Surely not in the state it - he - was in. What did the flow of time demand of Kain?

He opened his eyes and the whore yet sat there, hands fisted in the sheets. Kain folded his arms across his chest. "What is your name?" he demanded. Perhaps Kain was mistaken, perhaps...

The human choked on its lungful of air, its voice breathy and small. "I... if it pleases your Lordship, I can be anyone you..."

"What is your *name*, boy?"

"Rahab," gasped the human, tears welling in the perfect, sapphire blue of its eyes.

...and memory came to him, tangible and real, as vivid as the night he'd entered that crypt, that dark womb of decay. Blood and power filled the corpse as Kain poured in his soul, his strength, flushing through centuries of rot. Fluids pulsed once more through dust-dry paths - Turel had drooled when he'd risen; Rahab shed tears when he'd greeted the night.

The small sounds of the human nearly escaped his notice - the soft crinkle of sheets, the pad of bare feet on the rough-hewn planks. But he heard the thump as the human went to its knees before Kain, and he looked down... to find the whore reaching for the lacings of his leather breeches.

"I said sit down," Kain snarled, and the little human jerked back, nearly falling over, tears spilling down its dirt-smeared cheeks. With a muffled gasp, the creature scrambled for the bed. The human's ankles were tiny - just tendon, thin bones, raw skin.

A brief, hesitant knock came at the door.

Kain turned and jerked it open, the metal of the latch deforming in his hand. A tavern wench stood just on the other side. It carried a tray with hot bread, a covered bowl, an empty glass, and a somewhat dusty bottle of wine. Its eyes flicked to something behind Kain. "Your dinner, Lord." It drew a trembling breath. "Please... please don't hurt him," the human whispered.

Kain lifted the tray from the female's hands and shut the door in its face.

When he turned around, he found that the whore had divested itself of the rags that passed for its trousers. Back arched, naked and shivering, the creature displayed itself on hands and knees in the center of the narrow bed.

Kain's lip curled.

He'd rarely ever killed humans this small; the very suggestion that Kain would want to fuck one was unutterably insulting. A beast of the woods would be cleaner than this louse-infested little human. The fact that the whore - Rahab - didn't know any better was hardly a defense; it never had been in Kain's empire.

What strength, what possibility, what determination, what chance could there be in this wretched thing? Despite the eons Kain had lived, despite his long view of the world and clear sight, he could ultimately see little of what would be in this...wretch, this waif. There was no honor in it, nor the keen intellect and knowledge hunger of his son - superlative assassin and scholar both. Except... for the eyes. And with grudging admittance, the fact the whore was still alive.

For despite the poor lighting and the whore's shivering, Kain could make out any number of scars and bruises. And although Kain cared little if the humans of this town saw fit to abuse their captives, he was a little confounded that the whore had lived through a tenth so much damage, as thin as it was. The number and variety of scars seemed beyond reason on so small a body - but then Kain had never thought to closely examine a tavern whore before, and had no objects of comparison save recollections of the empire's human slaves and battle-grizzled veterans.

The whore should be dead, he realized. It should have longed for the soft embrace of death, at the very least. Instead it knelt there, offering the only thing it knew to offer, trying to survive in the only way it could. The whore clung to its filthy life with broken, blackened fingernails - it fought to survive, and thus, it lived. It was beyond the pale, beyond the blue; there was something of his son there.

Kain gritted his teeth and set the tray down on the room's sole table. The small, roughly-formed piece of furniture had been bolted to the floor, he found, and he ripped it from its anchorage with the squeal and snap of twisting metal. He set the entire table beside the bed. "Dress yourself, then sit," he said with deceptive evenness, "and do not... disrobe again."

The whore started in terror and scrambled to huddle on the corner of the bed as Kain moved the table, and it occurred to him that a mortal should not, perhaps, have been able to lift it so easily. It had been a very long time since Kain had concerned himself with what humans could and could not do. Evidently, that would quickly have to change - he could not simply deliver the child to the Sarafan and expect them to rear him properly, not when the boy was so clearly of slave stock. And even if some chapel or outpost did take the boy, what were the chances of Rahab becoming one of that order's living saints in just a few decades? Somehow, Kain's very presence had disrupted a vital chain of events, and now... well. Now history was in very serious danger of not repeating itself at all.

Ignoring the whore for the moment, Kain gingerly dipped one manicured nail into the thick stew. He sniffed carefully, then licked the fluid off. His palate registered the flavors as ashy and unpleasant - very few human foods appealed to him on any level anymore, - but not inherently injurious. He set the bowl near the bed, and took up the dense brown bread, examining it. It did not seem to be poisoned either, but - how much was it safe to feed a starving human? In the case of a fledgling, it was vital to get as much vitae into them as quickly as possible. But humans, like dogs, were capable of eating themselves sick, and Kain had no wish to have the stink of this little room enhanced, nor to subject the whore's body to the potentially fatal stress of vomiting. He tore off a talon-sized fragment of the loaf and laid it beside the bowl.

The little whore had crawled back into its trousers, though it remained huddled in the corner, eyes fixed not on the food just out of arms' reach, but on Kain. "Eat," Kain said, when the mortal made no move, "and do so slowly." Without a spoon, the whore should be forced to eat fairly deliberately, but Kain ordered it in any case.

Gradually, the whore uncoiled, blue, blue eyes fixed upon Kain, watching for the slightest movement that would indicate the food was to be withdrawn. When Kain did nothing, Rahab at last reached for the earthenware bowl. His thin arms trembled as he brought it to his lips. The boy drank a few mouthfuls of the oil-glistening liquid, eyes still wide with fear. Then, shivering, the whore restrained himself, and set the bowl back to the table. He pulled off a small bite of bread carefully, with dirty fingers, and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly.

The creature sat for a moment, as if thinking. Then the boy pushed the bowl towards Kain. "It's not poisoned," he asserted, voice little above a whisper.

Kain raised an elegantly arched eyebrow. "I did not ask if it was. Eat." Either this innkeeper made a very regular habit of poisoning travelers indeed, or the boy had been aware of the attempt on Kain's life, despite the distraction of servicing gambling humans at the time. Rahab had always been the most observant, the most aware of his surroundings, of all Kain's get. His clan had more than its share of superb spies and assassins. It pleased Kain to imagine that Rahab might possess some shadow of that ability even as a mortal.

The whore, for its part, froze for a bare instant, eyes widening with realization of for whom the meal was intended. The boy wasted no time - as if fearing that the food vanish, he tore a crust from the bread and used it to scoop up chunks of hot meat, shoveling them into its mouth.

Kain's fist struck the center of the table - barely a tap, though it rattled the earthenware and made the wooden table creak alarmingly. "You will obey me precisely, boy, if you wish to survive this night." Kain would not kill him - but if Rahab choked, there might be little Kain could do. First aid upon humans was not exactly a skill he had practiced of late. Or ever.

And that... would have to be corrected. Bloody hell. There had to be some way to return history to its proper track - some place safe enough, in all of Nosgoth, to leave the boy. Someplace where Rahab could grow fit and capable enough to cross blades with Kain's wayward firstborn, if only for a few minutes. Kain watched the little whore flinch, eyes darting from the food to Kain and back again. "Yes, your lordship," Rahab whispered, nodding quickly and reaching tentatively for the bowl.

"Sire -" Kain corrected absently, leaving the boy to his meal. He folded his arms and paced to the tiny window, where the air was at least marginally fresher, ignoring the graceless sounds of chewing and swallowing. Rahab would become his son in the distant future, and would make a strong Sarafan before that, but now? "- you will call me Sire," Kain said, watching the dim fall of drizzling rain.


	3. Inside the Flood

It took neigh half an hour for the bath to be delivered. A knock came at the door, and after Kain answered, a manservant rolled in the bottom half of a large barrel. Wenches filed in, each bearing buckets of steaming water. The barrel was quickly filled - Kain stood betwixt Rahab and the servants until the humans at last retreated.

Rahab had largely ignored the activity, too focused on sopping up the last of the stew. When the bread ran out, the whore glanced between the remainder of the loaf and Kain, and then set to scooping from the bowl with two dirty fingers. "Enough, boy - leave it. Come here," Kain ordered, as if to a mongrel dog. Best keep to simple commands until he could determine how much a human child this young could properly understand.

There was a short silence from the edge of the bed, then the soft swish of sackcloth against fabric as the wretch slid to his feet. Cringing and cautious, Rahab crept near.

There was, quite possibly, no worse manner in which to approach a vampire - particularly Kain himself. A fighting chance might be extended to the proud, the defiant. The quiet and respectful lived out their lives as slaves. The weak or pitiable evoked nothing more than a hunting response, and could expect no mercy save, occasionally, that of a quick death.

Kain closed his eyes, just for a moment, and found that neither the fear nor the filth he could sense made control any simpler. On the other hand, the sight of the little human also made it no easier a task to contain the reflexive backhand that would have snapped the wretch's spine. Kain could only hope the human could attend to cleaning himself without assistance - even in this weaker physical form, Kain had to exercise great restraint when touching humans, simply to avoid damaging them. And in his current mood... "Bathe," Kain said flatly, when the boy made no move.

Rahab looked up, and Kain glanced down into that startling color once more - the blue of a perfect summer sky, at the zenith of the heavens. Devastation blue. And terrified. Kain turned his eyes away, unwilling to look for long upon such a fragile, mortal expression on a face that should have been fierce and imperiously intelligent. Kain snorted softly, would have stepped back, save that there was no place to go in the tiny room save through the table, and Kain was fairly certain humans did not often splinter furniture with an incautious shove. "Do as you are ordered."

Perhaps such blatant fear had served to keep the mortal alive, but surely Rahab could not be afraid of the water. A hearty irony that would be, indeed. But Rahab backed away and after a few moments climbed into the barrel willingly enough, albeit he did so whilst still clothed, and then sat, forlornly small in the middling-warm water, seeming very much at a loss. The brownish lump of soap - or what passed for it in this era - still lay in its dish on the floor. It was entirely possible that the boy might not even know, or remember, what it was for. Which was a... problem. It had been literal eons since Kain had used it himself - surfactants were typically poor cleansers in the distilled alcohol vampires used to bathe, - and how in the world was he even going to...

"Lord?" a voice called faintly through the wooden door, accompanied by a hesitant knock. Were Kain merely human, he might not have heard either sound, faint as they were. Frankly thankful for the interruption, Kain stalked to the flimsy portal and wrenched it open, the leather hinges protesting.

Another tavern wench stood, wide-eyed and trembling a little, several scraps of absorbent fabric heaped in her arms. "They told me... I brought the... um. Your Lordship," she managed, hesitantly extending the armload of... towels, Kain supposed.

"Enter." Kain stepped to the side, as much as possible in the tiny room. "You will assist the boy in cleaning himself." There, problem solved.

The wench stunk of terror, the scent heightening by the moment as she bit at her lip and moved to tug off Rahab's sopping clothing with careful hands. The fear was distracting, bothersome for its allure, and Kain paced back to the window when it appeared that the tavern wench knew what she was doing.

From the snatches Kain could catch of the quiet conversation in the tavern below, it seemed that rumors as to Kain's intent and arcane powers were spreading rapidly. This could be of some use - fearful humans were typically both more predictable and more tractable - but would limit the time Kain could keep Rahab here. If the Sarafan, or whatever organization passed for law in this place, hadn't been summoned already, they would be soon enough.

And he dared not risk that the humans would, in their dread, take up arms against Kain. There was no danger to Kain himself, of course, but the boy was a different matter. One stray strike would be all it would take to dispatch the little creature.

Lost in thought and still as only the undead could be, Kain stood staring out into the rain, and soon the tavern wench and the boy began to speak quietly, presuming their exchange masked by the sloshing water. The boy spoke fearfully as he related the events of the past hour. Strange that the whore might have been less frightened if Kain had used him - after all, at least the boy would then have then known what to expect. In retrospect, Kain realized that had he a more kindly countenance, the woman might have come to the conclusion that he was feeding and bathing the child out of some manner of compassion. But kindness was not exactly a frequent grace upon Kain's features, whether he wore the human form or no. So, again in retrospect, it should have been obvious that she would put together the rumors she'd heard about what warlocks did - sacrifices to demons, cannibalism, necromancy and the like - and the child's fear, and make some very dire inferences.

But Kain would never, could never, have imagined that in a place like this, under circumstances such as these, the wench's human pity would lead her to make such a noble, altruistic, self-sacrificing gesture.

Despite knowing - for she had to know full well - that she would surely be killed for it, the wench attempted to drown Rahab.

Without a word, the scent of her terror peaking, she shoved the boy's head under the soapy water. And there were a few moments, before the boy's heart rate sped, before he began to thrash, in which Kain was not concerned; assumed that the wench was merely rinsing the boy. It wasn't until Kain turned and found the wench glaring up at him in defiant fear, holding Rahab underwater, that he realized exactly what was happening.

He had the woman's neck snapped between his fingers in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He hauled her back from the tub in one fist, jerking the twitching body upright, plunged his other hand into the water, heedless of the blistering burn, and dragged Rahab out by the upper arm. The crack of Rahab's thin humerus snapping was as hollow and dull to Kain's senses as the realization of his error. The boy struggled weakly, gasping for air, Kain's grip around his now-broken arm doubtless agonizing. But he didn't start screaming... until he realized what dangled lifelessly from Kain's other hand.

Even with a half-drowned, injured, wailing whore in one blistering and smoking hand, a dead wench in the other, Kain still heard a pair of humans approach the door to the small room, could sense the mortals even before one began pounding on the door.

"Your Lordship? The minstrel is here, an' I brought him, 'jist as you says. Should I..." The innkeeper was, of course, mindlessly insistent. "By the nine, what is going on in there?" interjected another voice, sounding shocked.

Damnation.


	4. The Split Heartcore

"Wait outside," snarled Kain, loudly enough to be heard through the door and the screaming. He tossed the tavern wench's body aside with effortless strength. It struck the bedframe with a crack, limp as a ragdoll, tumbling down to the floor where it might, with luck, be out of the view of someone standing in the doorway.

Predictably, the boy's crying intensified. Oh, for the love of the Pillars... "Silence, wretch," Kain hissed more softly as he gathered Rahab up around the waist with great care, releasing his broken arm, "or I will inflict still worse upon you." The boy had shown a great deal of will to remain among the living, and Kain countinged on that now.

It worked. In a manner of speaking. The wails faded to soft sobbing as Kain set Rahab's small body cautiously on the straw-stuffed mattress. Black bruises were already forming on the boy's arm, around the break. Between the bed 'linens' and the rags that were evidently meant to serve as towels, it was difficult to say which was the cleaner. Kain twisted the fabric of space to open one of his dimensional pockets, reached out, and seized the first piece of cloth that came to hand, producing a cape of fine, deep red wool as if from thin air. He draped it around the boy's shaking shoulders. The cape was meant to adorn a vampire lord nearly seven feet tall; its folds swallowed the little human.

"Keep quiet," Kain warned softly, before he stalked to the door. The corpulent innkeep was still in the hallway, arguing with the minstrel, trying to persuade the man to stay. Kain jerked the door open, keeping his still-blistered right hand hidden behind it.

"Oh, your Lordship!" the inkeeper exclaimed. "I were just..."

"Your coin," said Kain, fingers dipping into the pouch at his belt. He pinched the small piece of silver hard to deform the stamp and dropped it, still warm, into the man's plump hand. "Now leave."

Rahab was still snuffling softly. The innkeep's piggish eyes narrowed craftily as he craned his neck, trying to look beyond Kain. "Your lordship, I's afraid there will be an extra charge, if ye kill the..."

Kain toyed briefly with the option of rending the sordid innkeep into scraps of meat. The problem therein lay in the fact that Kain had no way to know what the timestream would make of the act. This was not, after all, an era in which Kain was destined to be. If he destroyed or disrupted a vital event or life, would he be cast out of this era? Until he found someplace safe to leave Rahab, Kain could not permit that to happen. Killing the tavern wench had resulted in no harm, but was that simply because she was of no import in the skein of history? "Get out," Kain snarled, reinforcing the order with a pulse of finely-woven power. The innkeeper, bowing and scraping, backed away clutching his coin, and turned to totter down the stairs. Kain turned his attention to the bard. "You, however... will remain."

"Now, wait just a minu..." the minstrel was a relatively small man, fairly slender. He wore a long, belted tunic and trousers in well-worn, graying blue, damp with the rain. By his dress, Kain knew him a minor country bard, rather than a player favored by any particular court. Kain locked gazes with the human, and the mortal's voice trailed off, his outraged face going blank, eyes unblinking and unfocussed.

Dumbly, the bard stepped into the room, and Kain shut the door behind. "Remove your clothing," Kain commanded, more for Rahab's benefit than the minstrel's. If the boy thought Kain's more mundane magical abilities dreadful, Kain saw no reason to offer up yet greater reason for fear.

Rahab huddled down in the folds of the warm, soft woolen cloak, gathering one corner a little closer, his eyes wide and his left arm carefully limp. There was a certain dull acceptance in his eyes, as if he knew full well what Kain meant for the minstrel to do.

Kain ignored the boy while he inspected the minstrel's discarded tunic. As repugnant as Kain found the idea of playing the role of a common highwayman, it would be, quite simply, an arid day in the Lake of the Dead before he put Rahab back into the filthy, stinking, lousey rags the boy had been wearing. The minstrel's clothing was... tolerable, at least, smelling more of horse than of man. It would have to do. Kain ripped a long strip of fabric from the hem of the shirt, and turned to Rahab while the minstrel continued to disrobe. "Can you move your left arm?" Kain demanded. While Kain was rather more familiar with injuries in adult rather than juvenile humans, the pattern of bruising and the fact that the broken limb was not deformed suggested a greenstick fracture, or partial break. At the boy's faint nod, he carefully settled the tunic over Rahab's head.

The garment was meant for a man of relatively small build; still, it swamped Rahab. After a few moments, the boy tentatively slipped first his right, then, haltingly, his left arm into the sleeves. The cuffs extended some inches beyond the tips of his fingers.

Unwilling to chance resetting the broken bone - not certain that it needed resetting at all - Kain took up his long strip of fabric and began wrapping Rahab's arm, over the fabric of the sleeve, paying close and careful attention to the tightness of the binding. Another length of fabric ripped from the edge of Kain's cape served as a serviceable sling, tied just so. It was, frankly, the best Kain could do, under the circumstances. He was far better at taking humans apart than putting them back together.

Kain stepped back, considering the boy. Rahab sat confused and shivering, looking like nothing so much as a maimed and waifish scarecrow in too-large clothing. His wide-eyed gaze darted, from time to time, to the scrap of fabric just visible on the floor at the foot of the bed - a corner of the tavern wench's apron. If the boy would otherwise have protested the order to don another man's clothing, that sight kept him quiet. Rahab was presently trapped in a very small room with a cooling corpse, a naked minstrel, and Kain - he likely had more pressing concerns than the state of his dress.

There was, alas, no point in requiring Rahab to wear the minstrel's soft boots, for they were far too big, and the child seemed unaccustomed to wearing shoes in any case. The rain outside was beginning to ease, the moonlight growing a little brighter behind thinning clouds. Kain turned his attention to the minstrel himself.

Under any other circumstances, Kain would have simply stripped the man's memories and blood from his body, would have consumed both with relish. But if perchance the minstrel was of some importance, if the timestream rejected Kain's presence now... Kain snarled silently to himself. "Remain here until dawn," he ordered the minstrel, who nodded slowly. Such simple commands - compulsions - could be inserted into a human mind without causing undue damage. Kain glanced about, then picked up the remaining loaf of bread and tucked it away into a dimensional pocket, making it appear to vanish from his hand. He nodded to Rahab. "Come, boy."

Slowly, the boy gathered up Kain's red cloak, holding it loosely around his shoulders with his right hand. Even so, the edge dragged on the ground, as did the ragged hem of Rahab's new tunic. It was clear that the little mortal's pace would be straggling at best.

Kain was a mage of no small prowess, and he could cloak both himself and Rahab from the view of mortals quite easily... provided the boy did not stray far from his side. Kain sighed briefly, the corner of his lip twitching into a snarl of mild repugnance. And then he stooped down, scooping the boy up into the crook of his arm very carefully. "Do not expect that this shall be a frequent occurrence," Kain stated, as the boy gasped and wound his undamaged right arm instinctively around Kain's shoulders for balance.

Kain disliked handling humans under most circumstances. Oh, they made tolerable playthings to be sure, but they broke without warning, and so very easily. Rahab's tiny heart was hammering, and Kain could feel the rush of blood through the little human's arteries, could smell it through his skin...

Kain tucked the edge of his red shoulder cape a little closer around Rahab's shoulders, extending his awareness and his powers. The human minds around them were all quite soft, malleable, and it was simplicity itself to imprint his desire upon them, to cloak himself and the mortal he carried in the thin guise of illusionary unremarkability. The humans in the tavern's main room still whispered to one another, but not one of them noticed Kain descend the creaking stairs, carrying the human boy.

Unnoticed and unseen, Kain carried the little mortal out the tavern door, and into the dim and drizzling night.

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Thanks to Nemi, for the cowrite. Thank you, reviewers, for the kick in the butt! We'd never have gotten this far without you. If you have something you'd like to see, or just want to chat, drop me a line!


	5. Never has the Sky Not Been Falling

The night was cold and wet, and Rahab instinctively hunched tighter under the thick cloak, huddling against Kain's frame, as if he anticipated finding warmth there. There was none, of course – Kain's body temperature was only marginally above that of the night air, mainly because of the past few hours he'd spent in the close heat of the tavern. Humans, Kain knew, could perish quite easily of cold alone, at temperatures which scarcely made a vampire sluggish. But was it cold enough to kill, now? Kain did not know for certain; it had been a very, very long time since he had concerned himself with keeping a herd of slaves alive and healthy in the fields or quarries.

Kain's booted feet afforded poorer purchase on the muddied roads than cloven hooves. That brought to mind another problem – if he were forced to remain in the company of the boy for several days, or even weeks, how was he to maintain his shapeshifted form? It required a constant trickle of magical power. Not a great deal, to be sure, but eventually even Kain's reserves of energies would surely decline to dangerously low levels.

Within mere minutes, the little human began to shiver, even under the woolen cape. Its quaking ignited a knot of predatory hunger deep in Kain's belly – it would be easy indeed to tighten his grip, turn his head, and sink fang into the small, proffered throat… easy, yes, but surely not sweet. The boy was in poor condition, and his scent was that of an easy kill, not a fine meal. That helped. To an extent.

Despite the cloud cover, Kain could see as far as the surrounding forest permitted, the night no barrier to his vision. Once several miles from the town, Kain felt relatively secure that pursuit was unlikely for a time. No cry had been raised. With any degree of luck, the humans would remain too frightened to seek Kain out, and it would be morning before the minstral awoke from his stupor. Then it could be hours more before the local constable was summoned. A thick overhang of pine boughs beckoned, offering a little shelter, and Kain halted, setting the little human to his feet on the padding of needles. "Sit," Kain commanded shortly, gesturing the boy down. He expected to be obeyed without hesitation. Instead, Rahab set to tucking the brilliant red drape so that he could squat without soiling the fabric on the dirt and resin-sticky needles, unaware that the heavily-enchanted cape could be – and had been – dragged through sewers without staining.

The boy would have to learn proper obedience, just as any fledgling must, that was all there was to it. As soon as Kain could determine how to discipline the human without killing it, anyway. For the moment, he ignored the child, turning his attention instead to stripping small lengths of dry wood from the sheltered underbranches. Vampires needed little illumination and less warmth, and magical lights served far better than fire for the former, while carrying no risk of dangerous burns to volatile undead flesh. However, it seemed to Kain that humans always kept fire close to hand and heart if they could, huddling about it to fend off the terrors that lurked in the darkness. A fire would not, of course, defend Rahab from the greatest terror ever to stalk mankind – Kain had long since grown quite resistant to flames, after all. Still, fire was likely the quickest and safest means of keeping the little human warm.

Kain arranged the tinder some few feet from the boy, scooping loose needles away with his hands to bare a patch of soil. He'd last started a fire in, if he recalled correctly, the year 3902 – eighty six years ago, by his timeline. The wood was still damp – everything was damp – but once started, the pitch-dripping twigs should burn sufficiently well. Since Rahab already knew him for a 'warlock,' Kain had no qualms about utilizing a cantrip to light the blaze. There were a number of very simple spells which human mages could employ to set flames; Kain chose to chance none of them. Magic which called upon the element of fire directly was unpredictable at best in any vampire's hands, even his. Instead, he utilized upon a more complex spell to summon a sustained arc of electricity, the heat of which ignited the wood with a hollow crackle.

Rahab flinched back, though only momentarily. He huddled closer, tugging the drape closer about him with his good right arm. His eyes – so very blue, even in the flickering orange light – never left Kain. For his part, Kain fed the fire a few larger pieces of wood, and then simply and wordlessly slung his cloak from his shoulders, spread it at the base of the tree, and seated himself. After a few moments, Rahab made a small movement. "Sire… do you wish me to…" he started, in a voice which shivered nearly as much as he did.

"I desire your silence and for you to sleep," Kain interrupted, gaze sliding idly to the huddled boy and then flicking away. "That is all." For several moments, Rahab made no move. But as Kain issued no further orders, the boy set to curling himself up, close to the fire, gingerly adjusting his broken arm in its sling. The shivering eased, and eventually ceased as the fire grew.

Kain leaned his head back against the roughness of the bark, and permitted his eyes to drift shut. The boy should be warm enough, for the time being, and he'd been fed – what else did humans require? Water – but did they need it more than once a day? Kain thought not. Fledglings needed training, and a great deal of it, lest they become little more than ravaging beasts, like Vorador's mad 'brides.' The boy was no fledgling, but would need instruction to fulfill his purpose all the same. But to whom, in the whole of this era, could Kain deliver an orphan whore for proper indoctrination into the Sarafan sect?

A monestary might do… but the Sarafan were a political and governmental organization, as much as a military one. No matter his talent, Rahab was unlikely to claim a high rank without considerable wealth and influence backing him. Who had such political standing? Aside from a handful of families in Coorhagen, the history of which Kain had been taught some three millennia ago, he presently knew of few such sources of power. Come to think of it… Coorhagen was far distant from Moebius' stronghold in this time, which lay upon the shores of the Great Southern Ocean. Even this early in history, Coorhagen had physicians and surgeons aplenty, for those who could afford their services.

Very well, then – Kain would return to Coorhagen. The notion held a certain irony that satisfied him. His course decided, Kain stilled, endeavoring to conserve energy over the forthcoming night as he kept watch. He was forced to continue breathing, lest he arouse suspicion, but he allowed that artificial rhythm to slow. The crackle of the little fire and the throb of Rahab's heart, even the unending drip of thin rain, were small distractions. Kain would be fully aware of any interloper long before they spotted the small fire. The forest was sparsely populated – every creature that could sense Kain had long since fled, though Kain could still scent the distant traces of trolls and common wrights. The closest living beings larger than a rabbit were a trio of forest bucks, which browsed nervously a quarter mile distant.

It did not take long, however, to discover that Rahab had no intention of sleeping. If anything, the boy's heartrate sped as the clouds began to thin, as the thin drizzle of rain ceased at last. Within two hours, the fire died to a glowing bed of coals, and Rahab began to stir.

With a growing sense of amusement, Kain tracked the boy's small noises as he crept from his warm cocoon of thick red wool, the rustle as he gathered the blanket up into a bundle. Rahab's bare feet padded all but silently in the thick carpet of pine needles. The boy approached, and for a moment Kain thought the fool human would dare attempt to curl himself against Kain's outstretched leg.

And then he felt small fingers at his belt, where hung the pouch filled with coins. How very surprising – the little whore was a thief as well. Kain would not have supposed he possessed the nerve. The boy was quick, well-practiced, slipping the ties loose and cupping the pouch carefully, so that the gold and silver within did not clink as the sack came free.

To Kain's pleasure, the boy was as silent and thorough during his exit as he was during the theft – he tucked the pouch away, gathered up Kain's red clan drape, and snuck to a distance before breaking into a jog. Kain tilted his head, his golden eyes slitting open. Yes, the moon was assuredly bright enough to illuminate Rahab's flight safely – it was unlikely the boy would tumble into a ravine. However… from the sound of it, the little human was headed back towards the town. Now that was disappointing, though given the creatures that could lurk the night, perhaps not unwise.

Kain stood. Thoughtfully, he picked up his own cloak, brushed it off, then toed damp needles over the glowing coals. He folded the oiled cloth away into a dimensional pocket, and then lifted his head, filling his senses with the little human's scent.

He set off at a ground-eating lope, inhuman, silent and swift as the night itself.

Each of the boy's light footprints was picked out brightly to Kain's vision by the moonlight, dripping leaves offered up the scent laid thick upon them. Existence narrowed most pleasurably down to this, to the hunt, to his prey's panting breath, fluttering heart. Shepherding the mortal was simplicity itself – a flash of pale skin between the boughs, a low growl rumbling on the breeze, and the boy froze, turned away from the distant town, fled once more.

The mortal's panic grew as the minutes passed. There was a boulder which, Rahab was certain, he'd seen a short time ago. Every sigh through the trees became a spur, every call of distant night beasts a newfound terror. He stumbled on loose scree, and then there was the scent of freshly spilling blood, lending hot carmine piquancy to the chase with every stumbling footstep as Kain drove him on.

But, Kain knew full well, all amusements must eventually come to an end. The third time Rahab fell, his breath coming in shallow gasps and his heart hammering like a bird's, Kain could chance continuing his correction no further.

The boy had fallen in a small vale, a sloping field through which trickled a small stream, cast in silver by the moonlight. His over-large clothing was wet through, and clung to his shivering body. Rahab's wide eyes fixed on Kain, and the boy attempted to scramble to his feet. His ankle failed him once again, and he clawed his way, one-armed, backwards over the wet grasses. There was, for once, no trace of resigned acceptance in the storm blue of Rahab's eyes, rather an animalistic drive for survival. The boy clearly expected no mere beating or rape in retribution for his theft, but rather death. Kain was glad to see that spark of life, of defiance. The boy's hand closed on a thick, fallen branch, and he tensed, stilling, prepared to strike the moment Kain approached close.

"I believe you possess something belonging to me." Kain came to a halt just outside the boy's striking range. He drew a slow and unnecessary breath, tamping down the killing instinct thoroughly. The urge to complete the hunt was like the first gout of blood spurting down his throat, was like the fluttering pulse of prey under claw and fang – a beacon, a draw, a need. Kain was no neonate, his self-control had been forged in millennia of trials. Even still, it took a moment.

"You know me for a warlock, boy," Kain's voice was a grating rumble, the slide of shale down a mountainside. "What precisely do you think to accomplish against me with a half-rotted twig?"

If Kain believed that pointing out the child's helpless position would in some manner pacify the boy, the vampire lord was very much mistaken. Rahab's fist tightened around his weapon; he said nothing, but glared back. Evidently, if his death was assured in any case, the boy meant to perish fighting. And while Kain applauded the sentiment, Rahab's timing was, frankly, on the poor side.

Kain lifted a hand and with a well-practiced gesture – careful, lest he seize a chunk of the boy's flesh as well as the purse in the telekinetic weave, and thus potentially separate both from the wretch's body – Kain reclaimed his erstwhile possession. The pouch of coins slipped from the boy's tunic and flew the intervening space, clicking into Kain's hand. His gaze narrowed as Rahab tensed with shock. If the human attempted to flee once more, Kain would flog the pads of the creature's feet until it could do naught but crawl for a week. That would solve the problem. Provided, of course, Kain was able to avoid inflicting permanent harm – perhaps he could employ his most lightweight strop, or a short length of reed... "Do you know why I retrieved you from that hell, boy?"

Rahab lay frozen a long moment. Then, slowly, he shook his head, just a small movement to the side and then back.

Kain loosed the drawstring of the purse in his hand. He found the coin he wanted by feel alone, by the scalloped edges and the embossed slickness of the metal. Kain withdrew the large platinum disk, held it up. The metal caught the light of stars and both visible moons, magnifying the glow, heightening it, casting a radiance around Kain's hand. "You are destined, boy, to become a prince among men." If that last word was presaged by a slight pause, Rahab seemed not to notice.

"This coin will someday be dug from your mines, minted by your forges." As the boy watched, Kain drove the pointed tip of one nail through the edge of the platinum disk; it took some small effort, for Kain was not so strong, nor his flesh so tough, in this form. He plucked from the air a thin length of leather thong, and threaded it through the hole at the rim of the coin, meanwhile entwining about the coin a minor magery: a spell to track and monitor the bearer of the enchanted object. "And like all currency from your great kingdom, it will be – has already been – inscribed with your image, Rahab."

Kain proffered the coin. It spun on its cord, flashing in the moonlight, now showing the seahorse stamped into one side, now the bust upon the other. Slowly, tentatively, Rahab reached for the coin, and Kain let it fall into the boy's one good hand. The little human had seen his face in puddles before, and once or twice in the looking glass the innmaster kept. But never had he seen himself like this – the figure that stared boldly back from the coin was arrogant, assured, prideful in its strength, fiercely intelligent, an edge of humor lurking perhaps in the curve of the mouth. It was older, too, and smooth-skinned, not gaunt with hunger. And yet, there was something about the eyes, the high and fine arch of cheekbones, that struck Rahab as familiar.

The boy glanced up, and Kain needed no mind mageries to read his expression. "I have no cause to lie about this, boy, nor to go to the effort of spelling an illusion. The likeness is yours, and a true one."

There was silence as the boy turned the disk over and over in his hand. His voice was a whisper. "How… how did you..."

"You presented it to me," Kain said, somewhat wryly. "Or rather, you will." As tribute, naturally, though Kain saw fit not to mention that.

The boy's eyes, when he looked up, were like the night sea – black sapphire. "Are you Lord Moebius?"


	6. Breathing

Kain blinked. He... could not, just at this moment, recall ever being insulted so. Even the Sarafan, when they'd still existed, tended to cleave to the usual worn and unimaginative curses. How novel. "I am not." Kain tilted his head, weighing his options. "And it is best to refrain from speaking his name, or of the things I tell you this night. Time is his dominion and he is a jealous overseer - he may not be well pleased to learn of my presence here."

Kain knelt in the damp grass, his motion a feral grace. "My purpose now is to ensure that you attain your birthright – by whatever means prove necessary. To that end, we shall travel to a place for you to rest and heal, and then you will begin to learn the things which all children of nobility must master. I do not intend to injure you further, unless necessary. And no mortal shall use you as did the tavern patrons, save you will it. Do you understand me?" Perhaps it was enough information - true, even, so far as the words technically went - to keep the child from fleeing again.

Rahab, shivering harder now as he cooled from his flight, bit at his lip as he thought frantically. He'd once seen merchants' children at study, long ago. But he remembered the trimmed feathers and the smell of ink and the marvelous, strange runes etched on rough paper. "I... I could... learn to… look at books?" he asked hesitantly.

Kain scrutinized the waif for several moments. "To 'read', yes. Among a great many other things," he said.

Rahab's shivering was becoming violent. In the inn, he'd often been warm, and frequently ate scraps from the kitchen in the evenings. He'd known what to expect - of the innkeep, the girls, the men. Here, Rahab was cold, imprisoned by an unpredictable and dangerous warlock who spun unlikely tales, and he had only the promise of food to sustain him. Food, and perhaps, just perhaps... the chance to touch a book, to look upon its secrets, to decipher them for himself.

Rahab gave the matter some thought; decided that it was, on balance, an equitable trade of circumstances. "Alright," Rahab said quietly, and nodded.

"In that case," said Kain, a little bemused that the boy thought his agreement or disagreement made any real difference to the vampire lord - though it was, perhaps, a useful fantasy to maintain, to the extent that it kept the mortal calm - "I should be most displeased if you perished of the cold this night. Let us adjourn to someplace more sheltered."

The boy obediently struggled to stand, clasping his enchanted coin close to his breast. A few limping steps by Kain's side, though, and the waif's ankle folded. The vampire lord was forced to turn and catch the wretch before he fell upon his already-injured arm, a further necessity of contact which the ancient vampire little appreciated. Kain snarled to himself quietly in pique even as he carried the boy downhill towards a thicket of traveler's pines, where he might spread furs and blankets, and start a fire – for the second time in the last eighty-six years.

This was going to be a very long trek, indeed.

.

.

The vampire lord chanced patrolling only a short distance that night, far enough to dispatch a young basilisk which denned among the crags nearby – the creatures were stupid enough to sometimes disregard a vampire's presence, and could be dangerous to slave stock even at a distance. Kain could permit no such risk, however slight, to his charge. Seeking the creature out by scent from a half-mile away, ducking into its tight cavern, and spitting the beast upon the tip of an enchanted sword all took mere minutes. Taking his bearings from the top of the nearest ridgeline confirmed Kain's suspicions – they were almost directly North of Vorador's manse, some four hundred miles by land from Coorhagen. Kain's monitoring spell, imbedded in the coin around the boy's neck, kept constant vigil over the boy, and his immediate surroundings, all the while.

Even still, Kain dragged back much of the basilisk's corpse in order to strip the scales from it, rather than delaying to skin the creature on the spot. The bronze-colored bony plates were a component of several spells, and Kain was hardly in a position to waste any chance at equipping himself more thoroughly.

Which brought to mind a question. What resources, exactly, did Kain possess?

The area now secured and the scales sealed away, there was little to do but find out. Selecting a flat expanse of rock some small distance from the fire, Kain spread a fur, hide-side up, and began to inventory the items he had collected. It was no small task – it had been decades, a century perhaps, since Kain had last bothered to fully sort through the objects he carried wrapped tight in dimensional folds.

Object after object he produced and laid aside: a bolt of water-silk, several iron crucibles, map cases, a second pouch of coins minted mostly of silver, several curving pieces of glassware, a stack of old histories which treated on ages far in this time's future, a cask of distilled alcohol, mortar and pestle, six weeks of taxation records for Turel's kingdom, a full case of flay devices, scraps of rope and other detrus, a dozen capes and changes of clothing, quills and ink, perhaps half a hundred bottles of powders and bones which marked a sorcerer's trade, a bestiary of furs, several handfuls of jewels of good enchanting quality, the iron stakes of a great tent, a number of weapons of varying description, wooden kite shields and rattan swords for the instruction of fledglings, three pieces of serioli armor, a small lapis carving of an Ancient, rivets and plates for the repair of gauntlets, tack for a tusked Dumahim warhorse, and much more. Towards the end of it, Kain uncovered two small and long-forgotten crates of bloodvials – one half empty. Kain slid the lid from one of the wooden boxes, trailing fingertips lightly over the ornate wire-wrapped tops of the little philtres within. He plucked one from its velvet depression and uncorked it, sipping whilst he thought.

All told, Kain decided, the items he could part with probably amounted to a small fortune. While it had been a very long time since Kain had concerned himself with local economies – value meant little when one could simply take what one wanted – he was fairly certain that this was sufficient to buy a manor house, lands, and the peasants to work it. The items were almost certainly not adequate to purchase a high rank amongst the Sarafan, nor to mention the training and equipment such a position required. For the first time in all of this long, mazed journey, Kain regretted the loss of his treasure chambers at the Sanctuary of the Clans, piled high with precious metals and artifacts from all the world. If he'd thought to bring even a fraction of that wealth with him, Kain might have found an easy answer to his present dilemma.

Of course, Kain had no use for gold, there in the blighted winter of his world.

It did not bear thinking upon - what use was there in mourning over spilled blood? Kain would simply have to find another means of ensuring Rahab's ascendancy. Kain began the task of placing objects back into the dimensional pocket, discarding those things without worth or possible use.

And then, lost in his plans, Kain kept watch as the horizon lightened.

.

.

Daybreak found Rahab restless, feverish.

His heartbeat was no faster or slower, but his body was shockingly hot in the nest of furs and textiles Kain had supplied the boy. He turned and murmured in his sleep. Kain woke him with a growled command, wary of touching the mortal, lest he break the creature still further in his clearly compromised state. The vampire lord had experience, of course, with plagues and poxes amongst the slaves. He even knew that there were types of fevers which could be cured, sometimes easily by Melchiah's estimation, thus saving a valuable slave from being culled on the spot, and other types of fevers relating simply to injury.

But he had never learned – had never dreamed he would need to know – the means of distinguishing one illness from another. Why would he, when every mortal was a disposable one? When Melchiahim had been always close to hand to control any pandemic?

"Up, boy," Kain growled again as the little human blinked blearily up at him. "Rise. We must move quickly, if we are to make good time." At his usual effortless, inhuman lope – a pace that would kill most horses forced to it for long - Kain might reach Coorhagen in six or seven days, even burdened with a small human and travelling without roads. But as he watched the mortal struggle to divest himself from the furs and blankets, a cold knot of fear began to twist in the pit of Kain's belly.

A human might perish in that time, mightn't it?

Uschtenheim was closer, but not by much, and the terrain was rougher. Villages and trading centers abounded, but was Kain to entrust the boy to a common hedge witch or bloodletter? Shifting a human into batform, alongside Kain's own body, typically resulted in a gory disaster. And teleportation… well. Not even Kain could teleport to a place he had not seen, a place at which he had set no arcane anchors. He did know the mountains and lakes around the city quite well. But how would those sites change over the next few thousand years?

Materializing a league above ground would not greatly inconvenience Kain; appearing a league under it, or inside a tree, might prove an uncomfortable delay. It would be fatal for any mortal Kain carried.

Impossible, that with all the magics and materials at Kain's disposal, he could not get one small human to a skilled chirurgeon with suitable speed. Simply impossible. There had to be a way – "Nay, boy. Hold," Kain said, raising up a hand as the child stepped haltingly from his cocoon, still clutching the vampire lord's drape close about his shoulders. Kain eyed the blankets, then the cloak, judging its length and durability. It… might do, at that.

"I shall send unto you a beast of the woods, ensorcelled by my magic," Kain said to the boy, thinking rapidly. Long habit kept him from lying directly – any other vampire could scent deliberate untruth, even upon Kain himself. "It will convey you; I will be close in case of trouble, but unseen. You must knot yourself into the drape you bear, that it might carry you more easily. Do you understand?" The enchanted fabric was strong enough to hold even against the great fangs of Kain's wolf form, provided Kain was careful. The wolf was big enough that it might run freely, even with a burden of Rahab's size dangling in its maw.

And it was very, very fast.

Rahab blinked, seemed confused. His voice croaked when he first tried it, and he licked dry lips. "I… yes. Yes, Sire," he amended quickly, looking about him, eyes falling on the blankets and the embers of the fire, and then on the skinned and beheaded corpse of the basilisk, and the refuse which Kain had cleared from his dimensional pockets, clearly attempting to make sense of the changes the night had wrought.

Kain saw no particular reason to enlighten him. "Then make yourself ready, boy," Kain said, "and I shall dispatch the beast to you shortly." With no further ado, Kain turned on his heel and stalked towards the nearest stand of concealing trees, leaving the fevered boy alone in the clearing, wrapped in imperial crimson, the coin around his neck.

It would be good, Kain thought, to stretch his legs again.

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Thanks to the reviewers - you gave me the kick in the pants I needed to get going. Drop me a line if you want to see anything (a specific scene, perhaps?) or have ideas or corrections, or just want to chat. Love you all!


	7. The Wind Inside

Kain ensured that he was well beyond the little mortal's range of sight before he unpicked the arcane bindings on his physical form, and *shifted.* His every sense heightened, skin aching as it stretched and remolded, his essential substance uncoiling to fill its natural vessel. With the relief of a creature confined for far too long, only now released to the night, Kain stretched heavy-muscled limbs in the cool air. His vision clarified, sharpened, so that each creeping insect and each vein of the leaves around him burst into perfect focus. His hooves flexed into the soft forest soil, the cutting edges digging deep, providing purchase to support a mass greatly magnified, heavy with muscle and the weight of millennia of accumulated power. Kain filled his lungs simply for the luxury of the act.

But he dared not delay long. Another slow stretch, intensely pleasurable, and Kain surrendered his natural form to the magic of shapeshifting once more, teeth set against the anticipation of pain. Bones twisted in their sockets, warping, lengthening. Tendons abandoned their anchors, sought new ones. Dense black muscle rippled beneath green-tawny hide, white hair darkened, spine lengthened into a lashing tail. Flat teeth sharpened, jaws gaping with a butcher's arsenal of finger-long fangs. Front paws the size of dinner plates touched ground, claws like daggers gripping the soil. A coarse, dark pelt flowed over the hell-thing that Kain had become.

His senses shifted as his form did. Vision faded a degree, though not so badly as it did when Kain sought human form. Scent and hearing both expanded to compensate – odors became almost tangible things, objects with color and weight, a whole world of sensation in every panted breath, and even the movements of the small insects beneath the soil became audible.

Kain turned, and started for the boy's clearing.

As always, it took him a few moments to relearn fine control of these limbs – they were long, disturbingly jointed, his tail was an unfamiliar weight, each wash of the breeze over his fur was a distracting caress. But after the first jolting steps, his strides lengthened, claws flashing. Muscles bunched smoothly he leapt a collection of boulders, tumbled taller than a man, with easy strength.

The young aspen and pine trees were packed thickly, this part of the forest untouched by the hand or plow for decades. The spaces between the trees were choked with tall grass, though this was little bar to Kain's vision, for his back would have reached a man's lowest ribs and he held his head still higher. But as Kain neared, and the errant breezes changed their course, it became obvious that something wasn't right. There was ash on the air, and the stink of searing meat. Had the boy fallen into the coals? The monitoring spell had given Kain no warning! The wolf burst into the meadow at a full bodied run, long morning shadows flashing over his pelt, brimstone-yellow eyes gleaming like embers.

The child had clearly not followed orders.

He was still swaddled in Kain's clan drape – that, at least, he had managed. But the boy had evidently sorted through some of the debris Kain had left behind, discovering prizes – a small dagger with a bent tip, several metal stakes, broken bits and pieces. He was using the first of these to hack strips of meat from the basilisk's skinned tail. Other gibblets were threaded on one of the stakes, which was arranged between stones over the rebuilt fire.

The cries of small birds, fleeing the vampire's arrival, alerted the mortal and he jerked upright, turned too fast. The boy's eyes were bright with fever, reddened from too little sleep. He gasped, the dagger clutched in his one good hand, twitching as if he meant to run and then freezing like a rabbit caught in a raptor's full view. The scent of the mortal's sudden fear was an alluring salt tang between them, new terror layered over old. And there was certainly reason for fear.

Kain's form was monstrous, as unlike a natural wolf as Kain himself was unlike a human. Hellhounds, those rare demonic beasts associated with the plane of fire, were closer in size. But even those creatures lacked Kain's mouthful of layered fangs - and the vampire's sheer strength, built upon a body designed for murder.

The vampire lord slowed to a trot as he neared, then a walk, golden eyes the size of the child's fists narrowing in consideration. How in the abyss was he to pick the wretch up like this? Kain came to a halt a few strides away, studying the problem. When the boy did nothing, Kain inclined his muzzle towards the dragging end of the crimson clan drape, and exhaled hard, making a huffing sound, in the hopes of reminding the human of his duty.

The boy drew a deep and deliberate breath. He stated to speak, voice cracking, then tried again. The boy drew a deep and deliberate breath. He stated to speak, voice cracking, then tried again. "Uhm. Hello," said Rahab, at long last.

Perhaps the terror of the past two days had addled the creature's wits. Kain said nothing, waiting with narrowed eyes for the mortal to perform as ordered. Neither a maw full of jagged teeth nor a tongue made for scouring the flesh from bones particularly facilitated speech. And his hands, lacking the prerequisite thumbs, could hardly tie the proper knots themselves.

The boy bit at his lower lip. "I kind of, erm. I kind of thought you'd be a pony," he said.

Kain exposed and inch more of his long fangs in a silent snarl. Idiot child.

Rahab reached down slowly, with the hand that held the knife, and picked up a small piece of meat he'd dropped in his terror. Then he tossed the flesh in Kain's direction. It bounced over the trampled grass, leaving rusty marks behind, and came to rest nearly upon the vampire's right forepaw.

Kain growled as he stalked a step to the side and seated himself away from the scrap of meat. _Damnation, boy. Do as you were told!_

There was no reply to Kain's aggravated Whisper. The human did not even appear to detect the mental sending. That was to be expected – even strong fledglings took decades to master the skill – and yet Kain found it disappointing, regardless. Also, inconvenient. Might it be possible to knock the wretch to the ground, and gather the corners of the cloak himself, then tie them with some combination of teeth and forepaw?

Gradually, tentatively, the boy let the battered point of his dagger dip, though he relaxed not at all. "If… if you aren't going to eat me… can… can I eat? If I finish quick, I mean?"

'_May I', whelp_, Kain found himself correcting, out of long habit. While he supposed he would have to make an allowance or two for the mortal's upbringing to date, such laxness of form and cultivation would simply have to cease.

But as for the boy's proposition – Kain considered it. The boy's preoccupation with nourishment, of course, was of no particular surprise to the vampire lord – young fledglings behaved in much the same fashion. Kain little liked the stench of cooking flesh. But on the other hand, a well-fed fledgling was a quiet one, and perhaps the same was true of humans. And a delay would give Kain a few more moments to attempt a solution to his present conundrum.

The massive wolf nodded its head, and in the event that was not sufficient indication of intent, stretched his clawed forepaws forward and lay down, belly flat to the grass. Even still, holding his head erect, he could very nearly look the child in the eye.

"Thank you. Uhm." The boy paused a moment more, and then stepped over the basilisk tail – putting it between he and the wolf, for all the good that would do him – and commenced to cutting once more. Another skewer soon lay over the fire, and Rahab pulled the first from the coals with a bit of scavenged fabric. Squatting on a fallen log, attention divided between food and wolf, Rahab commenced to tearing bits of sizzling meat from the skewer, gulping them down gracelessly, as if he expected this to be his last meal.

Kain watched him for a short time with eyes like brimstone, then permitted his attention to drift to the items still scattered around the clearing. After a time he rose, ignoring the human's sudden wariness, and stalked to nose through the wretch's bedroll. A large square of undyed flannel, originally destined to be stitched into the padding worn beneath armor, bore a degree of strengthening enchantment. Kain dragged it away from the others with his teeth, and set to spreading it on the ground. It took some few moments – the wolf's body was not well-suited to fine dexterous actions, and teeth made a poor substitute for hands when smoothing an object flat. The matter at last accomplished, Kain looked to the boy, growling shortly in indication that it was long past time to leave.

Rahab swallowed the last of his meat half-cooked. The mortal's expression appeared pained, but as Kain detected no greater degree of physical distress through the monitoring spell upon the coin the boy bore, he presumed that the human was merely thinking hard. "I... I think I know how to do this, uhm. I… guess you need a… maybe you already have… uh. I'll just call you Lord Wolf?" the boy inquired in a confusing and disjointed fashion, as if unaccustomed to speaking at length, as he stood and limped to where Kain had discarded several frayed hemp ropes. He took one up and then started, hesitantly, towards the enormous canid.

The black wolf's eyes narrowed as the mortal first bypassed his carefully arranged blanket, and then with scarcely a pause, tossed one end of the rope over Kain's back.

Snarling, a low hiss such as never could emerge from a natural canine's throat, Kain turned on the boy, jaws parted to deliver a reflexive, cautionary bite. Kain certainly knew better than to permit the taking of familiar liberties by his spawn. All of his own fledglings – Rahab too, in time – would know the pain of the wolf's long fangs… and much more besides.

Yet this was not Kain's Rahab. How, precisely, was the vampire lord to discipline a creature as fragile as this one? Even a nip might kill. Kain snapped his maw shut, teeth clacking like the close of a steel trap. The boy, for his part, appeared scarcely to notice Kain's abortive lunge. He patted the wolf's wiry flank soothingly, making a tsking sound with his teeth as one did to calm nervous horses. "Tsa, there, I'ma trying to hurry. There now… easy, Lord Wolf." Rahab crooned, and leaned down to sweep up the square of flannel, ruining Kain's careful arrangement. One wadded corner followed the rope over the wolf's back, around his shoulders.

Kain growled low as the little mortal crouched, found the dangling ends of the rope and fabric, and drew them tight around the wolf's neck. Using teeth and one hand, the mortal tied a knot and cinched the rope tight, clearly practiced. Had breath mattered more than incidentally to Kain, he might have found himself uncomfortable. Again the boy tossed a length of rope over his back, wrapping it around his neck and beneath his chest several times, making of the rope and twisted flannel a harness, of sorts. Then he stood back a little, one hand still on Kain's heavy-muscled shoulder, clearly trying to decide how to proceed.

Kain was an old creature, and a prideful one - but disinclined as he was to indulge the stripling, standing upon that pride would do nothing but waste time. And while time was one thing Kain had in abundance, the same could not be said for the shivering waif that fickle Fortuna had left to his care.

Still, Kain was no beast of burden, to crouch and cower before a master. The rope about his neck was there only because he allowed it, and the human would do well to remember that. With a last narrow-eyed stare, he turned away from the boy and paced over to a nearby deadfall. The timber was half-rotted, and he had hacked away dryer portions of the wood upon its underside in order to start his fire the eve before. But the bulk of the log remained, and it was sizeable enough to serve as a mounting-block of sorts, even for an undersized boy. He stepped alongside it and waited, a trickling growl of impatience escaping as he did so.

The boy had made a stifled sound of protest when Kain had shouldered away from his hand-but now that a solution had presented itself, he hesitated, his apprehension plain. Kain growled again, impatient with his dithering. Sucking in a breath, the mortal approached-and when the wolf did not move away, he climbed ungracefully upon the log. Reaching out, he wrapped the fingers of his good hand upon the rope about the wolf's neck, and daring greatly, slung one leg over that coarse-furred back, pulling himself astride.

"Th-thank you, Lord Wolf," the boy said apologetically, legs clamped uncomfortably-tight about Kain's ribs.

At least the mortal's weight was no inconvenience - indeed, it was scarcely noticeable at all. The wriggling of fingers and toes into his thick fur, however, were rather moreso; three points of tickling sensation as the boy firmed his grip, working his good arm and both feet under the crosswork of rope and flannel tied across the wolf's back, fingers and toes clutching fur. The boy's heartbeat, the heat of his body, and the spread of Kain's own clandrape like a red riding cloak over his haunches - all were utterly novel sensations. Rahab nestled his chest along the wolf's spine, and his fidgeting settled after a few moments.

"Uhm. I'm ready," stated the boy.

Rumbling his pique, Kain took a few steps, prepared for the feel of the boy's slight mass sliding from his perch. But the mortal clung like a limpet, so lightweight that even his slight strength - when factored with the tautness of the ropes - seemed quite sufficient to keep him in place. The wolf kept to a walk across the sloping field, tall grass shushing by to either side. At the edge of the western forest, brush and autumn-blooming shrubs were clumped thickly, to twice the height of a man; under other circumstances, Kain would have simply jumped these, or ducked under. Now he picked his way through with care, so that nothing more than soft leaves and tiny twigs scraped his burden.

Though the mortal's heartbeat sped a little, and his scent sharpened slightly, he seemed in no distress. Upon breaching the maze of underbrush which rimmed the forest proper, Kain permitted his pace to quicken, wide paws finding sure footing amongst the stones and tumbled smallwood. As Kain ghosted deeper into the forest, the trunks thickened and the ground-choking vegetation thinned, and clear paths proliferated. As always, the woods were nearly quiet around Kain, most living things capable of sensing death either fleeing or huddling still and silent, as their natures dictated.

The wolf's flowing gait was smoother than any horse's, his wide paws silent over the terrain, layered tendon and muscle absorbing the impact of each stride and transmuting it into forward force. A small streamlet was bypassed easily, Kain's clawed feet finding certain purchase on wet and moss-covered stones, the wolf's agility so great that he did not even have to slow his pace. The next stream, though, had carved deeper into the soft soil, cutting a channel several lengths deep and wide. Kain could leap the distance easily, but with the boy... with a curt growl of annoyance, the wolf paced upstream, seeking a fallen tree or crumbled embankment.

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Good news - my coauthor will be joining me for the next while, so maybe I can even deliver on that 'tolerable grammar' promise. Huge thanks to reviewers, too! I really appreciate the fixes, and the ideas. If you've written, check your PM inbox - hopefully I've replied to everyone.


	8. The Flame

The underbrush grew thickly along the bank, dense shrubbery and viney growths winding their way underfoot, until Kain was forced further away from the stream's edge in order to prevent the whelp from being scraped from his back. The boy was surprisingly silent, hanging on with tenacious strength without so much as a yelp or a whimper, his fear evident only in the slightly quickened breaths that puffed against the coarse fur of his neck and the drumming of the heart within that birdboned chest. Despite himself, Kain could not prevent a small spark of approval-perhaps the creature was not as worthless as he had feared.

Turning to avoid a wickedly-thorned tangle of vines, Kain came across a trampled down deer track-and following it, found it led down to a wide and shallow ford in the stream, the water slowing in a broad eddy. Kain's lupine nose told him this eddy was a favorite for the beasts of the forest-but even though the water was shallow enough here to allow both deer and other, lesser beasts to cross without any trouble, it was still an impassible and deadly expanse to a vampire. Kain snarled a little, lips curling back from fangs in frustration. It was tempting just to leap across this obstacle-but the awkward burden he bore probably made that impossible.

There was a tree, however, that lay askew across the eddy's mouth. It was certainly no forest giant-in truth, it was not much bigger than the timber that grew near human villages. But the bulk of its trunk lay above that deadly waterline, and it stretched almost across to the other shore.

Kain considered it. Then, with an impatient huff, decided it was worth the risk. Setting first one clawed forepaw upon the fallen tree, he tested its solidity-and when the trunk bowed slightly, but did not break, he eased the rest of his weight upon it. In this, his unnatural size was not to his advantage, and he was forced to creep, one slow step after another, over the rushing water as the trunk narrowed to a precarious ribbon of wood beneath his paws. One more step, two-and then a hind foot slipped. Scrabbling for purchase, his flailing foot splashed into the water with a hiss and the sizzle of scorched flesh. Growling, Kain lunged, throwing himself forward in a muscular leap, the whelp letting out a desperate yelp of fear for the first time, fingers clutching painfully tight upon his fur-

-and then they were on the other side, scrabbling up the embankment until they were far enough for Kain to recover his composure. He shook his hind foot, bending his head around to look at it, growling low in his throat. A superficial wound, nothing more, but it would hamper him somewhat until enough time had passed for it to heal.

The boy stirred, his death-grip relaxing minutely. "Are are you hurt, Lord Wolf?" he asked hesitantly.

Kain growled in curt reply and started moving, his long-legged trot a little slower now and not quite so smooth, each placing of clawed hindpaw leaving behind a few drops of thick black vitae or a tuft of half-melted fur. The injuries seared by water were persistent on his kind, comparatively slow to close - and the misstep had sunk his leg in the stream nearly to the hock. Even still, Kain could feel skin spread rapidly over raw muscle, an itching, crawling sensation that overlaid the pain of the burn.

He could not stop to attend more closely to the wound. To judge by the shift of weight and the mortal's bizarre inquiry - how in the abyss would it matter if Kain took injury? Perhaps the boy had meant to ask something important, like if Kain could still run, or fight - the boy intended to dismount. And that could not be permitted. Few creatures took injury from water and of these, vampires were the most common. If Kain were branded truthfully... well. The boy took fear of warlocks; discovering himself a vampire's charge might stop his heart.

Given a little time, the burn sealed over, healing without scar or mark. As it did, the great wolf gradually lengthened his stride, old trees flashing by, every hour at such pace consuming five leagues or more as the sun rose higher. Recalling how cleverly Rahab had clung to his makeshift harness before, Kain chanced a few more jumps when circumstances demanded - short ones only, over shallow ravines and streamlets - which permitted him to run a truer course, due west. No creatures chanced crossing Kain's path, but their scents spoke of their recent presence - reclusive giant deer, squat-legged forest hydras with their many spreading hoods, huge aurochs like mountains of lumbering meat, rooting boar and northern tapir. There were other, more acrid scents, too. Cave wrights nested somewhere to the north. In places, skeletons slumbered uneasily beneath the leaves, and some of them would walk with nightfall. A freshened breeze brought the musk tang of common wyvern to the wolf's nose, and he slowed momentarily, then adjusted his route to avoid an outcrop of crags where such creatures might perch. Common wyverns were more stupid even than basilisks, and fiercer.

Eventually, the boy on his back began to squirm. Not twenty minutes - and two leagues - later, Kain was loping through a dry pine forest, his tread silent on the thick bed of needles. An impertinent hand worked its way from under the twist of the makeshift harness, and patted hesitantly at the back of Kain's head. "Uhm. Lord Wolf. I need to... uh."

The wolf snarled, ears laid flat against his skull. But what had he expected? The creature was but mortal, after all, encumbered with all the same weaknesses that Kain s own kind overcame upon raising. Teeth bared in evidence of his displeasure with the delay, Kain permitted himself to trot to a halt, paws crunching in the fallen leaves. He held himself quite still, whilst the boy worked his limbs from under the harness and slid from Kain's side. Alighting, Rahab caught himself with one hand on Kain s stone-hard shoulder, patting the wiry fur a few times. Then he tottered for the nearest tree, bow-legged and stiff as an old man, though he'd been riding but a handful of hours.

Exhaling hard in impatience, Kain took a moment to gather his bearings, to the extent he could. The thick trees made it difficult to take a line of slight. But, crossing a dry ravine some leagues back, he d spotted a familiar, flat-topped upthrust looming huge amidst the surrounding mountain peaks to the north. Malak's bastion would rise there, carved stone by stone from the granite cliff faces, probably soon. The pattern of the hills seemed right, the terrain growing steadily steeper as they neared the ragged divide that separated Coorhagen s deep valleys and the sea from the rest of the teeming continent.

For the first time in a handful of minutes, Kain drew a deep breath, tasting the air, seeking out some scent that might provide a nearer hint at location. Leaf litter and decay, insects and small animals, the boy... and a powdery, subtle scent, like talcum or dust, so natural to Kain's experience that for a moment, he could not place it.

Then there was a short, terrified cry from the boy-trousers half-undone, he stumbled backward and fell among the gnarled roots of the tree. In the corner of Kain's view, a pallid and starved creature leaped from the darkness of the forest. Movement came before thought-and Kain lunged. Before the starving vampire, intent upon its prey, could do more than turn, the wolf's fangs sank deep into undead flesh. Taloned paws dug deep into the loam as Kain turned, flinging his victim away from the whelp with a savage twist of his head, his teeth tearing muscle away from bone. The vampire-in this age, undoubtedly one of Vorador's pathetic get-hissed in defiance as it rolled to its feet, either too desperate or too immature to understand the truth of what it faced. The creature charged, fangs bared, black-clawed hands ready to rip and tear-and with a snarl Kain met him, blocking him bodily from the cowering boy and closing jaws about the vampire s unarmored throat. In a welter of blood and gore he bit through that pallid neck, bones crunching beneath his teeth; the vampire thrashed, clawing at the gray-furred form as thin, dark blood spilled upon the forest floor.

It did not take long for the creature to die a second time; within moments the vampire had bled out, and another savage bite of Kain's jaws separated the head fully from the body. True death set in, and the body crumpled beneath his paws, dissolving into ash adorned by bits of leathered skin and bone.

Licking the vampire's blood from his jaws-thin, unsavory stuff, hardly worthy of his consumption, really-Kain turned to inspect his charge. He did not think the vampire had managed to injure the boy, but given all else that had happened over the past night, it would be just his luck to have the whelp break yet another of those bird-bones ...

Huddled small and still amidst the gnarled coils of ancient roots, the boy panted in shallow breaths. But his undamaged right hand clutched the little dagger he'd found, bent tip wavering but ready. Kain huffed shortly, nosing at the boy's tunic, scenting for pain or the smell of fresh blood. He would have to obtain an enchanted silver blade and suitable training for the whelp, if the creature insisted on attempting to defend himself so.

Moving slowly, shivering, Rahab tucked his little eating knife back into his makeshift belt. He patted hesitantly at the bloodied fur across Kain's chest. The fight had been so brief, over in a flash, but that ragged man... had been no man, he was certain of it. Dry dust, scraps of skin, and bones were all that remained now. The bare skull was intact, and the howling gape of its jaw housed fangs. Bards spun tales of it, soldiers breathed stories of it - daywalker, dead-kin, cutter of life, alp, greatest necrophage. Vampire. "Better than a pony. A lot, lot more better," Rahab whispered, thin fingers worming through the wolf's thick mat of guardhairs, stroking over the skin beneath, searching for the places that the doomed and desperate fledgling had scored in its brief struggle. The minor gouges had closed within moments after being carved.

It was a strange sensation, being stroked in this form, one utterly novel in all Kain s long existence. Satisfied that the boy had sustained no further damage, the vampire lord stepped back, watching carefully as the mortal levered himself slowly to his feet, apparently still stiff, but in no worse condition than before the attack. Kain had given little thought to the other hunters of this forest - but in this deep country, the things which fed upon mankind were nothing short of desperate, evidently willing to risk crossing even Kain. And it was the height of the day, now. Come nightfall...

The boy scrabbled for a handful of fabric as his purloined trousers threatened to slip down his thin hips. "Is e ... Is e dead?" Rahab asked after a moment, curiosity clearly piqued, as he bound up his breeches as well as he could with but one hand. The boy leaned down and picked up a thin stick.

At least, Kain decided, the boy was rather more resistant to mental trauma than to physical. He was half-minded to let the whelp poke and explore as he pleased; Kain had little regard for fledglings not his own, and even less for the starving thing that had dared to attack Kain himself. But with such solid proof of the dangers of the wildcountry before him, Kain could not permit Rahab to waste precious minutes in the pursuit of mere curiosity. With a low growl, he paced forward, agility belying his size, to interpose himself between the mortal and his object of interest.

The boy stumbled backwards a few steps, suddenly apprehensive-then recovered, dropping the stick to clutch at the ties to his trousers. He extended a hand to pat one gray-furred shoulder. "I-uh, I understand, Lord Wolf." Kain had to suppress a very unwolflike snort-it seemed the boy thought his motives were spurred by protectiveness, not impatience-damn his inability to speak in this form! Or for that matter, the wretch's inability to Whisper.

"I'll just, uh-" Losing what little mastery of the language he had possessed, the boy waved vaguely at a nearby tree, and headed toward it after a last glance over his shoulder. Once there, he did his business-Kain wrinkled his nose at the sharp, unpleasant scent of human urine-then did up his trousers once more, eyeing the shadowed forest with no small amount of trepidation.

Kain gave another impatient snarl, and the boy jumped, then scurried back to the wolf s side. The vampire stoically endured the inevitably clumsy fumbling as the boy clambered up upon a nearby root and from there, to his back. Then he set off once again, ignoring the whelp's yelp and frantic clutch at the makeshift harness, irritated by the time he had wasted playing nursemaid to human frailties.

Despite their dallying, however, they made good time through the remainder of the day. The forest had thinned, the trees more windblown and twisted as the land became more broken beneath his paws, tumbled boulders adorning hillsides and turning their path into a winding progress. At this pace, Kain thought they might make Coorhagen by the end of another day. He looked forward to being able to shed this form; wolf-shape might have its uses, but it was sorely lacking in many ways. Such as hands, for instance.

Night had fallen, with a slivered moon on the rise, before Kain realized that something was wrong. His burden had been silent ever since the clearing, with only the boy's puffed exhalations evidence that he still breathed. But now-those breaths were a great deal more rapid, and the body pressed along his spine was trembling, shivering with cold. Damnation! Kain paused, orienting himself. Coorhagen was still too distant-there was no chance they would make it there this night. But upon the wind was the scent of woodsmoke, and horses, and spices? Such things meant a human encampment-and it was becoming clear that if he wished this whelp to survive, Kain would require the services of the boy s own kind.

Growling low in his throat, he changed course, nose in the air to track that elusive scent. He did not think they were far off; and most likely near water, as humans always were.

Rahab shivered harder with each passing minute as Kain picked his way along the crest of a rocky cliffside, the ground here rugged and irregular. The wolf's body was cold, nearly the temperature of the cool night air, though thick fur provided some insulation to keep the boy warm. And Kain's crimson clandrape, voluminous though it was, bore no particular enchantments to preserve warmth - a vampire needed no such luxuries, after all.

A prickle across Kain's skin made him pause, lift his head. His ability to sense fine degrees of temperature variation was poor in general, but he felt suddenly as if he had stepped into a pocket of colder air. Much colder, to judge by the way the little mortal shifted his weight, shivers becoming full-body tremors. And then, pressed close between Kain's shoulder blades, the coin around the boy s neck began to vibrate, its clamor felt in the ancient vampire's mind as well as against his skin.

With a vile and very unwolflike hiss, Kain turned, fangs bared - but only a swirl of mist amongst wind-tortured trees greeted his sight. Nor did his sense of smell indicate any enemy. Yet even in the few seconds that Kain searched with his natural senses, the medallion's klaxon warning intensified. No nightwraith or common specter would hunt a vampire: any enchanted weapon or minor spell could defeat such incorporeal spirits easily. And other undead had no nourishment for these lesser ghosts to steal, for they devoured the living heat of weakened creatures. But Kain was bearing bait upon his back. And in this form, possessing neither hands nor voice, Kain had no magical defenses.

Turning tightly, the wolf fled. The boy's grip was lax, too loose, and only the child's light weight and the manner in which he'd wedged bare feet and good arm under the makeshift harness kept him in place as the wolf vaulted tangles of branches and rockfalls. The night streaked by in a blur, each full running stride covering ten feet or more, the wolf skidding down a debris-strewn slide, leaping a quartz-glittering ravine, flashing across a barren hilltop like a massive grey ghost.

The real ghosts were faster, so close that Kain could feel them now, could sense the spectral presence, insubstantial and tattered hands reaching for his prize, pawing at the cloak that covered the boy. Subaudibly howling things, wisps and shades, the nightwraiths phased directly through barriers that Kain was forced to vault or circumscribe.

Lashing paws carried Kain around the next bend of a narrow-snaking valley and there, just ahead - fire. Campfires, glowing between the bulk of several encircled wagons, upon which elaborate paint and gilding gleamed in the firelight. Alerted by their own warning magics, humans scrambled for weapons, their shadows darting, utensils overturned in the chaos. Scarcely changing course and never slowing, Kain shouldered aside a startled sentry, the slender man caught mid-yawn, struck flat to the ground. A prickle of energy whispered over Kain's fur, and then directly ahead, in a huge scintillating ring around the wagons -

- flames ignited midair, wards meant to repel undead and monster alike.

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Cowrite with the amazing, beautiful HopeofDawn. Thanks also to you super reviewers - I appreciate your time and your help and your ideas! If you've got PM enabled, check your inbox - I try to write back.


	9. Chapter 9

No minor gauzy sheet of repellent magic, this was a ward, grounded in complex sigils scratched into the soil, the lines and whorls now radiant with energy. Great sinuous ropes of fire coiled and wove, knitting themselves into a scintillating wall of fire, a barrier bright enough to strike fear into the heart of any undead.

Kain was not just *any* undead.

Eyes narrowed to slits against the fiery glow, the wolf changed course, great hunks of sod thrown up under his flashing paws, streaking directly for one of the huge wards which anchored the repellent wall. Even as he gathered his strength, steel-tempered muscles bunching, he could feel his burden's grip begin to fail. The ropes had loosened in Kain's mad dash, and the boy's own strength was all but gone.

Wraiths howling at his heels, he launched himself into the air, straight at the fiery wards. The wards seared at his skin, scorched the edges of his fur in a moment of bright-flashing agony, the inimical magic within attempting to bar his passage; but Kain was not only vampire, but Balance Guardian as well, the embodiment one of the primal forces that rooted all of Nosgoth, and no hedge-wizardry could hope to stand against him. Fire crackled, lashing like whips to tangle and tear-and was repelled by the dark press of Kain's own power, smothering the flames before they could sear undead flesh from bone.

Landing, Kain felt his burden lurch, then slide, the whelp's strength finally failing him even as shouts of alarm and dismay rang all about them, humans running to confront the demon-wolf in their midst with torches and steel. Rahab fell, an ungainly and unconscious weight, and Kain found himself caught in the tangle of both boy and makeshift harness. This situation, he decided, was both undignified and unacceptable. Snarling in aggravation, he released his hold upon wolf-shape, the twisted cloth of the harness dropping away as he stood upright once more in his true vampiric form - then, before the light of the spell could fade, caught at another and assumed his aristocratic guise. A pale, obviously inhuman nobleman was unlikely to be much more reassuring to a human encampment such as this, who suffered as much from their own kind as the beasts that haunted the wild. It would, however, ensure far less blind terror than his true visage, and a much greater chance that he would be obeyed, especially if combined with a judicious amount of force.

"I require food, shelter and what healing you can provide for the boy," he commanded, ignoring both torches and makeshift blades as unworthy of his attention. The human males, clad in ragged but clean garb, shifted. They had ringed the creature, holding him at bay from the rest of the encampment-but none of them seemed keen to attack. The thing that stood before them was unlike any they had ever seen-not a ravening vampire, nor a mindless zombie. Far too solid to be either wraith or any other night-hauntings, the pale man could only be a wizard, or something far more terrible ...and none of them wished to be the first to fling themselves into the fray against such a creature!

Kain's eyes - no longer golden, but raptor-keen nonetheless - narrowed. "Now, vermin, if you value your worthless lives. Or do I need to skewer a few of your worthless band in order to hasten your obedience?"

Behind Kain, lit by the arcane glow of the wards, several of the insubstantial wraiths struck the now-weakened barrier. A few vaporized. Others of the spectres, marginally stronger than the others and enmaddened by the prospect of weakened prey so close, clawed at the ragged and slowly-closing puncture caused by Kain's passage through the shield, howling like the damned things they were. Others drifted back, turned, their forms wavering and fading as they moved away from the illumination... and then the sentry too was screaming, the human left outside the barrier.

Inside the ring of wagons, a few of the women dressed in bright patchwork garb took up a wailing cry as well, and commenced to throwing themselves against those men and boys who, wisely, had stayed back. The mad flickering and dancing of the disrupted wards made shadows leap and twitch like wraiths themselves.

It was all profoundly irritating.

And potentially dangerous, too - Kain could permit no interruption that might fatally divert his attention from the boy crumpled at his feet. With a low hiss of impatience, Kain lifted his hand, found the strands of magic that he needed by nothing more than the feel of them in his mind and between his fingers. And _twisted._

Every nearby undead, other than Kain himself, erupted into bright blue flame - attenuating, dying, their shadowed tatters of souls ripped free and cast to the sucking void. The spectres vanished, even the strongest lasting only a second or two under Kain's arcane assault. Further out in the forest, there were other flares - rats or ravens, perhaps, scavengers which had dared feed on common shambling zombies, or skeletons so old they lay immobile and harmless but yet unliving. The spell was indiscriminate. Nothing that lacked a beating heart survived.

The human trapped outside the circle kept up its caterwauling for a moment, then fell silent, coughed a few times in confusion, and started back towards camp, shivering. The wards, no longer sensing undead along the perimeter, began to power down, their harsh glare fading out. On the other side of the wagons, one of the shieldback draftbeasts placidly lifted its head, tiny eyes blinking blearily, then the creature turned back to its silage. Beneath a wagons, one of the bull-mastiffs - enormous dogs akin to wolves and bred for protection - whimpered shortly. Shocked silence reigned.

Kain's lip curled, a gesture that would have exposed a single long canine fang, had this form been blessed with them. "Force me to repeat myself again, tzigane, and I will -"

"Nay. Nay, Sirah, there be no need for any of that." A woman long past bearing years pushed her way between two of the blade-wielding men. Her hair was almost as white as Kain's, her skin wizened like a half-dry grape. Only rarely did humans attain such an age under the Empire s dominion. "Andrzej, Mihai, enough. Go see what be wrong with the dogs. Nicu, make up a warm bed for this boy, and fetch my unguents. You there, carry him." The woman struck at one man's arm with her staff - a weak blow, but one which seemed to galvanize the mortals as thoroughly as the crack of any slaver s whip. Chastened and confused, the men sheathed their blades. One of them stepped hesitantly towards the vampire lord, as if he meant to touch Kain's boy.

Kain growled at the importunate reach; the sound was not as inhuman as it might have been in his true form, but was sufficiently menacing enough to make the bearded man back hastily away. "Guide us, woman, and make it quick. I am hardly about to leave the whelp to you unwatched." Cradle-robbers and child-stealers, the prudish and suspicious towns-dwelling farmers and villagers named the travelling folk, usually without cause. But tzigane were not without curses and tricks aplenty, all finely honed to survive in a world where every hand was against them, and Kain would be a fool indeed to leave that which he intended to protect unguarded in their hands.

The old woman hesitated, some of her assumed authority faltering for a moment-then she gave him a deferential nod, waving the man away. "Of course, Sirah. This way, if it be your will." Leaning on her staff, she moved towards one of the wagons closest to the center of the encampment and the fire. Kain knelt to draw his arms - carefully! - under the boy's limp frame and then followed, carrying the shivering weight of the boy effortlessly, and ducked his head to enter as she led the way inside. A heavy combination of foreign spices, human scent and old wood made for a pungent atmosphere indeed, and Kain had cause to be thankful his nose in this form was no longer vampire- or wolf-keen. He could also feel the prickle of minor magics woven into the ornate rugs and worn carvings of the walls, but none of seemed inimical to the undead - or if they were, they were not potent enough to affect an elder.

The woman gestured to the narrow bench-bed that ran along the far wall. Piled high with thick-woven and brightly-patterned blankets, it was more than large enough for the slight boy he carried. " If you would put him there, Sirah-we must warm him before all else." There was a discreet rap upon the door, and she scooted around the vampire lord with the adroitness of a creature used to confined spaces. The man she had named Nicu had returned, it seemed - she took a wrapped chest from him with the liquid murmur of hushed conversation, then turned back to her patient, flapping an impatient hand at the worried man when he seemed inclined to linger.

The whelp coughed hoarsely in his sleep, then snuffled a bit, thin fingers plucking at the blankets. Kain scowled down at him; did the wretch have to be so blasted *pitiful*? It seemed so impossible, the idea that a strong, proud fledgling could ever emerge from this pathetic chrysalis of shivering flesh and bone

Back creaking ominously, the woman placed the wrapped chest on the floor beside the little bed. She straightened only to find the creature's child shivering atop the blankets, and sighed briefly. Using the knob of her staff, she pounded on the wooden wall of the wagon. "And hot water for the flasks, Nicu!" she added to the listeners whose heartbeats Kain could detect through the wooden walls, and then shambled again around the vampire lord. She set to easing the topmost quilt out from beneath the insensate boy. "He'll be warmest under the coverlets, Sirah," the granddam said neutrally.

Kain snarled, but lifted Rahab cautiously once more, careful not to squeeze or grasp. The boy was quite warm against Kain s skin - cooler perhaps than Kain's normal prey, but certainly not as chill as a hungry fledgling. "I do not require your admonitions-" Kain growled, placing the young mortal back down and permitting the woman to cover him over. He knew that humans tended to prefer being swaddled in fabric, though it seemed to him that was likely due to mortal modesty or fear of injury, parasites, or predation. Being covered did not keep a vampire warm... but on the other hand, only the newest fledglings wasted any significant amount of energy as body heat. Perhaps the woman s words made a certain amount of sense. "-only your cooperation. Repair the boy, and I will depart with him this night - and leave your band unscathed. Delay, and I shall find myself significantly less... charitable."

"Aye, Sirah", said the woman. Most creatures could sense fear, and she concealed hers the best she could by focusing on the boy. The child s shivering gradually deepened, becoming a hard, wracking shudder. Chillghasts could drink down a man s warmth until he was too weak even to shiver right; she had seen it before, so perhaps this was an improvement. And so much smaller was this boy... was his arm *broken*? Ghasts wouldn t have done that. Sighing shortly, the woman levered herself down onto one knee, and folded open the top of her small chest. The wood was intricately carved, smoothed and darkened by the touch of many hands. It came open on old hinges, revealing dozens of paper or leather packets. The woman s knobby fingers flicked through them, selecting some, returning others. "And if I do hurry, and he be too weak, he will be in similar trouble a league down the road. Then the curse you are like to leave behind will slay us just the same, Sirah, and you'll still be no better off." Comfrey and coughenbane, peppermint and ginger, if she had any left...

Kain arched a brow. He had much more potent devices at his disposal than mere curses. "Then apply a healing draught, woman, and be done with it."

The matron stiffened a little. "Would that we had such draw with the Sarafan! Nay, Sirah, they ve not deigned to gift or sell such tonics to such as we. And thieving them is impossible, these days." She spat in the direction of the door. "Even so, rest and food and my herbs mend just the same."

Eyes narrowed, Kain drew a fraction of a breath - reluctantly, for the smell of the cramped wagon and crowded humanity was overpowering in this small space - and tasted no particularly heightened scents beyond the usual, nor the bitter mealy scent of a lying mortal. With some reluctance, he stepped back so much as the walls of the wagon allowed, braided garlic and bundles of aromatic plants bumping against his back, to permit the woman room enough to work. He watched sharply as she performed an unusual but practiced series of actions - placing her ear upon the boy's chest, feeling along the sides of his jaw and the pit of his arms. When the leather flasks of hot water arrived, she poured a little into a crude wooden cup, along with some of the dried herbage. She wrapped each flask in a scrap of felt and tucked it close to the boy s side, and then, after some few minutes, began spooning the warm water into the boy's mouth.

The sound of the boy s heartbeat gradually became stronger, a firmer and less thready pulse, and the intensity of his shivering reached a peak and then began to ease. Kain waited, watching, with a patience developed over centuries. His silence seemed to unnerve the woman, and after a time, she cleared her throat. Her fingertips rested on another packet. "Perhaps... the Sirah would favor a restorative draught as well?"

A trace breath served to identify the substance she lingered on - opiates had a remarkably distinct scent. Kain weighed again the benefits and drawbacks of simply cutting a bloody swath through these mortals, and his laugh was a sinuous, dark thing. The incapacitation of just a handful of this band might serve a useful purpose. "I think, tsigane, that you should not offer to slake a thirst you do not understand..."

The door eased open, and the wafting breath of air smelled of cooked meat and root vegetables. "The stew, Baba Puridaia?" The boy was lanky, tall and thin, with tousled red hair and skin tanned dusky. He shifted nervously, from one foot to the other. Kain's eyes narrowed.

The elderly woman's fear was well-concealed, with only the slightest widening of the eyes, the barest shiver under those many layers of cloth to betray her reaction to Kain s unsubtle threat. Well-hidden or not, however, the threat proved its worth-her gnarled fingers left the packet of opiates where it was, and instead she busied herself with receiving the newly-arrived food. "Good, good-set it there. Don't hover about the doorway, boy - you ll let in the damp." With a brief sideways look at Kain, she took the covered pot from the boy, expertly blocking his curious gaze- and Kain's as well. "Well? Go on, boy, before I thump some sense between those ears!" Shutting the door again, she shuffled back to the bed, setting the pot on a small nearby table. "Useless brat."

A brief check on the boy swaddled on the bed, and she grunted in sour satisfaction. "We've chased some of the cold out of his bones, but he looks to be running a fever." With another careful, sidelong look, she added, "Respectfully, Sirah, if you take him out into the cold again tonight, he s not likely to survive. Sleep and hot food will do much better for him, along with such cures as I have."

Kain arched a skeptical brow. The old woman obviously didn't fear for her own safety, but for that of her band; she probably hoped to make herself too useful to kill. And then there was that other boy. It seemed an impossible coincidence, but could it be he'd found more than one future-fledge this night? Such a possibility bore investigation.

He'd felt no shift in the timestream, no uprising against his will, as he had with Rahab. But then, would he necessarily feel such swells? Perhaps not, or perhaps there had been no dissidence simply because Zephon was in no danger. How many rangy youths with sandy-red hair could there be, in this time?

Quite a great number, Kain was forced to conclude. And going after the second bird now might risk the escape of the first. Kain relaxed with patient feline grace. Let the old mortal believe that her wing-dragging ploy had succeeded - it mattered little to Kain.

"So it seems," the vampire lord growled, looking down upon his fragile prize, tracing the shape of the boy beneath the coverings. "Tend to your charge, tzigane. I am... content to bide my time."

Less than half-aware, Rahab shivered beneath the furs.


End file.
